Looks like foliar thrips? (judging by the damage and black poop all over the leaves.) They can be quite damaging. I'm not sure what will work for them and help keep the plant still edible. You can try neem oil and coating all of the leaves. You'll have to wash it off before harvest though. Systemic pesticides might help, but you won't be able to eat the leaves safely. In the short term you can try submerging the plant in water or neem oil/ water, but again, this might either kill it or render it less edible. You might be better off tossing and restarting fresh if growing for edible plants. Personally, I am amazed people buy seeds and cultivate this plant. When I see those seed packets in the garden centers, I always wonder if such varieties are different in some way than the thousands I see growing wild in our area. Are they hybridized to taste better? Do they bolt at a slower rate? Are they less likely to self propagate/ take over a garden? Just wondering what makes it worth buying such seeds vs, harvesting some wild dandelion seeds from outside and growing those. Just curiosity.

I think I saw through yardtractor's comments, and found them humorous. He hit all the antiquated high spots from back when the only version of organic gardening was Rodale's approach using 100% compost. I would add stinky since a lot of people use manure based compost which was often not completely composted. You would have to go back to pre-2005 to really get into the flame wars between organics and synthetics. Lots of people on lawn forums around the Internet were banned for life. And I agree that a lot of nonsense is repeated as fact on the forums. I prefer to use photos showing results and let the reader decide what to do. For example this photo taken by former Lawn Care forum participant, mrmumbles, shows his zoysia lawn about 30 days after spot treating with alfalfa pellets. You don't have to look too closely to see the improved color, density, and growth provided by a true organic fertilizer (not compost). But back to the OP... Are you in love with that large tree in the middle? If so then I would suggest creating a planting bed around it and fill the area with something that will hide the roots. Go to my member page and look at the trees in my yard. The three trees on the right are surrounded by "cast iron plant" for about 4-6 feet out from the trunk. The one in the back did not have roots at the surface so it was left alone. Whatever you do, if you bring in soil to cover your roots, do not bury any of the trunk of the tree. Leave some of the root flare showing and stop with the soil. Yes you did not use enough seed, or you did not keep it moist everywhere. You did seed at a poor time of year, so if you want this fixed, get ready for late August. That's the time. It will give the new grass plenty of time to develop roots which can resist the summer heat. Also the summer annual weeds are not germinating in August, so your weed pressure diminishes a lot. Sometimes it is expedient to spot spray with chemical herbicides and get on with your lawn life. You will still benefit from having been on an organic fertilizer program and continuing with that afterward. I call it tough love. They used to make a foaming Weed-B-Gone that was amazing. You could leave a spot that looked like shaving cream on individual weeds. There was absolutely no overspray and nothing touched the soil. Don't know why they don't sell it anymore. It would wipe out dandelions in 2 days. In the mean time practice deep and infrequent watering, mulch mowing at a high (highest??) setting, and fertilizing.

If you live in NJ and have natural pH 6.85 soil you should thank your lucky stars. You must have a local microenvironment - many NJ soils can run as low as pH 5.0 - we had a guy claiming a NJ soil with pH 3.5 just the other day. We told him to rerun the tests as we didn't think that was possible, but untreated NJ soils and most of the Northeast tend to run pretty acidic. Was the soil test taken by mixing soils from several spots on your lawn? My comment about "the next time you lime" was that you were asking about your bumper crop of dandelions. Soils in which the amount of Calcium is lower than 7 times the amount of Magnesium can make dandelions the "alpha dog" of the soil as they are specialized scavengers of Calcium from places very deep in the soil. You can't add Calcium or Magnesium to your soil without affecting pH upward though. My comment was to say that should the pH fall, use a Calcitic lime instead of a Dolomitic one. Don't use any lime unless that pH falls. Your soil test didn't happen to include a "buffer pH" value, did it?

There are hundreds of yellow-flowered Asteraceae which look superficially dandelion-like. Your photo is taken from too far away to see much detail in the leaves and also you have not said where the plant is located geographically. So an identification is pretty tough. Maybe you could post again when there are some flowers (are they even yellow?) and show us a closer view of the foliage. For example, I can't tell if the leaves are smooth or not.